Dr. Bledsoe

Character Analysis

Dr. Bledsoe is the president of the narrator's college, and the narrator looks up to him until he turns out to be a big phony. While Dr. Bledsoe preaches a doctrine of hard work and humility as the key to black advancement, he retains his power as president of the college by pandering to white people's expectations of how he should behave – he scrapes, bows, and all the while deceives the powerful white men upon whose patronage his power depends. Thus Dr. Bledsoe's supposed commitment to his race is a sham; at one point he declares that he would see every black man in the country lynched before he would give up his position of authority.